In various industrial processes such as that for the production of pentaerythritol by reacting formaldehyde with acetaldehyde in the presence of an alkaline condensing agent, typically an alkali or alkaline earth metal hydroxide, there results a by-product stream of an alkali or alkaline earth metal salt of formic acid. These formates result from a reaction between the alkaline condensing agent and the formic acid formed in the reaction. At the present time no general use is known for sodium formate and therefore it is not readily marketable. These by-product formate streams are thus usually discarded. In order to avoid losses of material it is of course desirable that such formates be converted to more usable products, it being particularly desirable to recover the metal values and the carbon values in the formate.
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide a process for the treatment of an alkali metal or alkaline earth metal salt of formic acid so as to convert such to one or more products which are more desirable than the formate itself. It is a particular object of the present invention to provide a method for treating an alkali metal or alkaline earth metal formate so as to convert it to products including methanol and an alkali or alkaline earth metal hydroxide. Additional objects will become apparent from the following description of the present invention.